Monday, September 6, 2010

my vision of feminist justice in 1987

FEMINIST JUSTICE~S CONTRIBUTION TO CRIMINOLOGYHarold E. PepinskyCriminal JusticeIndiana UniversityBloomington~ IN 474051987To be presented at a session on peacemaking at the AmericanSociety of Criminology Meeting~ Montre~l~ November 1987.FEMINIST JUSTICE~S CONTRIBUTION TO CRIMINOLOGYAbstractThis is an assessment of an experiment in offering FeministJustice as a criminal justice seminar. Personally. the seminarcontributed to the assertiveness of women and to the softening ofmen. Structurally~ the seminar was a testing ground for theoriesof how to transcend domination and violence. The seminar made itpossible to see crime and punishment as twin forms of violence~and peacemaking as a foundation for organizing a democraticalternative. Altogether~ radical feminism is an especiallypowerful way to build a theory and practice of responding tocrime and punishment.The spring of 1987 I taught a seminar on feminist justice.Twenty-nine of us participated. 13 were women. The seminar wasthe idea of my wife, Jill Bystydzienski, who helped orient me infeminist literature and suggested readings. Jill had beenworking with Birgit Brock-Utne, a Norwegian peace researcherwhose book called Educating for Peace: R Feminist Perspective,became the pivotal work in the seminar. Bi rgi t .... 'i si tedBloomington during the semester. Seminar participants got tohear her and meet her, which brought life to the written word.Another key work for me was American criminal justice researcherKay Harris's paper for the 1985 Second International Conferenceon Prison Abolition, "Toward a Feminist Vision of Justice." whichexplicitly related feminism to issues of crime and justice. Thesyllabus for the semi nar', which lists these readings, isappended. The syllabus indicates that the seminar focused on aparticular genre of feminist work called "radical femini'sm,"which regards women not only as ultimate victims of viol~nce anddomination, but as having special personal gifts of peacemaking.As luck would have it. shortly after the seminar ended Canadiancriminologist Gail Kellough and I were made co-presenters at asession of the Third International Conference on Penal Abolition(ICOPA), where I reacted to her presentation of how she hadchanged as she had moved from prison abolitionism to radicalfeminism. In this setting I got to see a different level ofcriminal justice response to radical feminism, which helped put- 1 -the seminar in perspective.I had originally thought of going on to explore anothersubject--perhaps nonviolent techniques for handling conflict--inthe spring seminar slot the following year. However~ commentsfrom a number of participants persuaded me that feminist justiceought to be repeated. In this essay I aim to identify what it isthat students in the seminar, I, and feminists like Kellough,Harris and Brock-utne feel radical feminist literaturecontributes to issues of crime and punishment.GETTING PERSONALAn incident at the ICOPA session highlighted a strength of theseminar I had just finished. At the ICOPA session we werediscussing systems of domination as a foundation for violenceincluding crime and punishment. One woman argued that if peoplewere to transcend violence in the larger society~ children had tobe raised without being dominated by parents, to grow up knowingthat domination was neither right nor inevitable. To illustrate~the woman described how she had related to her own children. Amale criminologist who happens to be a pacifist and giftedtheorist interrupted. He said that we had precious little timeto discuss important issues, and under these circumstances, heconsidered it especially rude for someone to introduce personalanecdotes. Personal anecdotes were after all beyond refutation~2hence foreclosed discussion. Instead. we should be describingstructures in which various forms of ~iolence presentedthemsel \/es.It happens that personal experience is a foundation for radicalfeminist thinking~ and the anecdote a starting point for many atheoretical generalization. Personal history is featured inKellough and Harris's presentations of ideas about justice.Birgit Brock-Utne is particularly effective when she moves fromdescribing global structures of violence to discussing, howstructural issues have manifested themselves in her attempts toraise nonviolent sans of her awn. What same of us see as r"Jergenius in this regard has been dismissed by prominent malecolleagues as lightweight scholarship.It was getting personal which students recurrently emphasizedwas the mare valuable feature of the seminar. As the syllabusindicates I tried to play dawn grading, and asked students toturn their awn rationales for grades at the end of the semester.One graduating senior woman who very nearly had a straight Aaverage, generally regarded as one of the best and brightest ofour criminal justice majors, wrote:I learned mare from this class than I have in anyother, and since I need a grade, I am forced to saythat I think I deserve an "A". But, I want everyone toknow that what made this class such a valuable learningexperience was the willingness of my fellow classmates(and I include you in this group, Hal) to openlye:-:press thei r innermost thoughts ~ feel i ngs, and idea':;,.3In this course~ we allstudent and teacher.played the double role of bothIn the same vein~ a man who has barely been getting grades heneeds to stay in school~ who is big and not averse to usingviolence as in his -ob .J as a bouncer~ wrote~ "This is the firstclass of my college career that I have enjoyed coming to~ and gotinvolved in." (And indeed he cpntributed a great deal to classdiscussion~ including making a well-researched presentation as ateam prOject he initiated with a woman classmate.)It has been a struggle over the years to overcome classroomresistance to thinking at all critically about issues of crimeand punishment. Even some very clearly and simply written works llike Nils Christie's Limits to Pain~ have been dismissed asabstract~ meaningless~ impractical. While some fairlyconservative members of the seminar group remained so, no onecomplained about the irrelevancy or abstractness of readings orof class discussion.It is of course possible to make a course informal and concreteon any number of topics~ but the subject of how women and menrelate seemed to have special power. For one thing, many of usare curious and interested in crossing the gender barrier andgetting better acquainted with members of the opposite sex.E-ar I y on, men who read about extraordinary violence againstwomen--from assault, to failure to share food~ to failure torecognize labor--were inclined to feel protective~ and to shc)w- 4 -women in the class that they wanted to care for them. Thisprotectiveness was graphically displayed by our third classmeeting. Most of the women were sitting at a long table~ whilemost of the men were sitting on chairs along the wall surroundingthem. Carol Gilligan's description of the different voices ofmen and women was up for discussion (see the syllabus). The mentalked long and intensely about how men discriminated againstwomen and what ought to be done to help. One or two of the womenspoke up initially, but soon the women lapsed into silence.A form of violence of major concern to Birgit Brock-Utne isthat men interrupt women and take up most of the time indiscussions. I called a break in the class. After the break, Ipointed out the pattern of the discussion~ and encouraged thewomen to speak. Now, instead of talking about how men treatwomen, the women started describing--in their own terms--the"silent voice" depicted by Gilligan, the voice that speaks interms of connectedness with others, of nurture and compassion.After class, I noticed that most of the essays turned in thatweek had been written by women, who again eloquently describedthe silent voice. I was moved by the experience to write thefirst of what turned out to be a series of letters to seminarparticipants, observing that women and men in the class tended tof .~.ll into the gender patterns that Gilligan and Brock-Utnedescribe.This was a turning point in the semester.0::..JWomen continued tolisten hard, but men began to listen more too. Women became moreassertive and expressive. And alternatives to positions normallytaken in public discourse began to be vividly, personallytaken--first by women, then by more and more of the men.Cooperation versus competition and nonviolent resistance versusviolent defense became recurrent topics of discussion. We wentback and forth from the specific to the general. For instance, adiscussion of whether personal progress depended on competition,as in studying in school, became a televised panel discussion bydental hygienists, a midwife and a state legislator of whethercompetition between men (doctors/dentists) and women(midwives/nurses/hygienists) impaired the quality of health care,with seminar members joining in lively conversation. Discussionwith an administrator of a local women's shelter of whether toblame victims for assault alternated with discussions of personaldecisions as to whether to engage in fights.As women in this process became more assertive about describinqthe silent voice, one key insight was that women were in realways the stronger rather than the weaker sex. This was revealednot only in figures like Brock-Utne's about how women generallywork more hours than men (especially when they add jobs outsidehome to housework), or can afford less time off as from caringfor sick children than men, or show fortitude in peace movementsas in Greenham Common. It also showed up in personal stories ofcourage and fortitude from women in the class.- 6 -This meant not only that examples of cooperation andnonviolence were real rather than abstract~ but that men couldafford to open up and show the softer side of themselves~ and thevulnerablefriendship.side that warmed to compassion and nonviolentIt almost became a badge of honor for a man todescribe personal shame at having given way to violence~ or toacknowledge having cried or having thrived on cooperation. Oneman in the seminar repeatedly wrote of seeing and enjoying newways of relating to people~ as when he played a game ofracquetball with a less experienced player to keep the ball goingrather than to show winning form. A couple of men who early inthe semester stressed how tough their young lives .had been~turned to describing how they had stopped fighting. All in all,as women and women's positive experience gained more respect andattention in the seminar~ men and women themselves let softnessand compassion emerge in their public discourse and writing.Even the men who held to traditional male stances did so morequietly and diffidently, listening hard along the way.These changes were not always discovery of new ways to behaveand feel. Often, even for men, they were affirmation of parts oftheir past~ as in recalling and newly appreCiating that one'smother had tried to teach nonviolence.At the same time women acknowledged violence of their own oramong women. I came to believe not that women and men are- 7 -different~ but that convention allows different sides of womenand men to be acknowledged in public discourse. Giving respectand recognition to the "women's" voice allowed men to e>;pressthis side of themselves. Allowing women to be more vocal in an-atmosphere I'Jhere honesty was safe I et them el-:press "men' s" -sidesof themselves. Given the tenor of the radical feministliterature which celebrated cooperation~ nurture and nonviolence,it became permissible for men to tryout and explore suchfeelings and experiences as genuine, concrete, viable options tocompetition, individualism and violence.As Gilligan and Brock-Utne point out, larger value systems andtheories of social life emerge from the personal e:-:perience ofbeing able to express oneself cooperatively or competitively,connectedly or individualistically. Radical feminism is anunabashedly personal examination of social structure and action.As a topic of discussion radical feminism legitimizes ane:-:p I orati on of personal options which open people's minds tolarger social criticism. Political stances on larger issuesbecame softened and liberalized more than I have encountered inclasses on other SUbjects.The man who interrupted the personal anecdote at the ICOPAsession might well acknowledge that beginners start from personalexperience, but that more advanced social theorists could leaveit behind and get farther faster. Suppose we are alreadysophisticated enough to recognize that domination and- 8 -exploitation exist. Suppose that when it comes to crime andpunishment, we already agree on abolitionism and nonviolence.Then surely we need not be so primitive as to rely on personalanecdotes. We need instead to examine larger patterns of howpeople outside our personal circle live.I disagree. I regard the transformations which happened in theseminar as advanced forms of theorizing which senior socialtheorists would do well to adopt.GETTING STRUCTURALA basic premise of radical feminism is that the public realmrecapitulates the private. Those who live by domination at homewill live by domination outside. Structural change will at bestbe a facade unless the change reaches people's intimate lives.In his study of Private Justice (London/New York: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1983) , StLlart Henry has provided remarkableconfirmation that formal structure is confounded by privatehabits. Henry examined how discipline was imposed on employeesin a variety of organizational structures. In a workercooperative radically organized to be egalitarian, he found thatmanagers could still impose punitive sanctions on employees quiteautocratically. As far as he could see relation between disputemanagement and organizational form was purely coincidental,- 9 -although he did not examine the private lives and personalhistories of members.Disillusionment with real lifegovernment is widely experienced.autocracy are routinely found in allunder supposedly modelCorruption~manner ofviolence andrevolutionary,supposedly democratic regimes. Time and again, various forms ofclass oppression appear to those who live or observe closely informally egalitarian communities~ including radically utopiansmall ones.One such massive recent experiment is the Chinese Communistrevolution~ which I happen to have become enamored of at theonset ofclosely.the Cultural Revolution, and have followed fairlyThe first major legislation of the People's Republic ofChina was the family law. Early on, women were encouraged to getdivorced and out of of abusive and arranged marriages. As lateas the Cultural Revolution, children were encouraged to resistparental oppression. Life in work and residence groups was builton and mirrored family life. As the children of therevolutionaries became adults and challenged their parents forhegemony, traditional patterns of domination began to be noticedat home, and ultimately reasserted themselves in the largerpolitical and economic structure. Symbolically, the conservativemovement was spearheaded by villification of a woman, thecharismatic leader's widow, who was too uppity to know herplace. Confucian stratification by age and gender has reasserted- 10 -itself with remarkable force; even the legal structure has takentraditional form.Radical feminists argue that by relegating cooperative,nurturant behavior to women in the private realm, public life hasbeen reduced to mechanistic expedience. So one-sided hasmale-associated public life become that even revolutionaryrhetoric portends a top-down~ hierarchical imposition on a socialorder. If a revolution really were democratic, the privatecompassion of women would be recognized as a primary ingredientof public life. If power really began to move f~om thegrassroots up rather than from the top down, we would firstrecognize that a vast portion of vital labor occurs in theuncompensated privacy of women's housework, and build on thefoundation of having democratized that most intimate part of ourlives. There, too, succeeding generations could be socialized indemocratic lifestyles rather than in drawing the most basic classdistinctions--those of gender and age--so that as they ihheritedother organizations they would not tend to impose hierarchicalsubstance on democratic forms. The tragic flaw in Gandhi'sresistance to British violence and oppression was that beyond theclear and brilliant exposition of principles of satyagraha, noteven Gandhi himself was able to treat his own wife and childrenwith the compassion and nonviolence he espoused~ and without thismost basic change in the life of Gandhi and his followers,violence and oppression reasserted itself in the Congress Party- 11 -and elsewhere in Indian public life, nurtured by the dailyexperience df privat~ despotism. Nor can male workers carry auta proletarian revolution without having conquered their awnoppression of women and children at home. It is one thing tospat class oppression. It is another thing to transcend it inpublic life without even having managed to transcend it in theprivate life one mast controls. A real revolution is nat anabstraction. As American criminologist Richard Quinney isdiscovering in his current reflections on Buddhist teaching~ onehas to learn to cultivate compassion in one's daily sphere ofpersonalabroad.interaction before one can aspire to cultivate itBirgit Brock-Utne exemplifies the radical feminist gift ofidentifying parallels between larger social structure andpersonal experience. It is moot whether we anthropomorphizesociety or sociologize personality;know the one as we know the other.whichever way we begin~ weHow social structure works ismare than noting that phenomena coincide. The way we expect thecoincidence to recur or vary depends on how we infer peopleliving that reality to feel the connections. If reports ofdomestic violence fall after men are arrested~ for instance~ ourinference as to whether arrests inhibit the violence or changeand mask its form depend not on material form of the data alone~but instead an placing the response of arrested men in samecategory of how we believe people feel and react between data- 12 -sets. If we believe that the reformation of policing inMinneapolis to make arrests routine has reduced domestic violencethere, consistency dictates find fear of retr i but ioncontrolling the violence of ourselves and our intimates, unlessof course we have a theory of how as by gene structure or graceof God "we" differ from "them." If we find that punishment makesus find sneakier ways to pass on our anger to others~ we have thebasis for inferring that police mobilization has merely displacedviolence.objectiveOLlr se 1 yes .In either case~ our inference rests on supplementingdata with feelings which we experience thrc)ughData "make sense" when they sound affective chordswithin LIS. The historian, the survey researcher, theethnographer infer structural significance of data sets by whatthey find they themselves are capable of feeling. Conversely, todiscover a new social pattern implies the discovery of apreviously unnoticed capacity of oneself to respond to others indaily life. The extent of possibilities for structural andpersonalanother.change we have brought to awareness constrain oneThis accounts for why data or logic alone do not changescientific or political opinion. Before one person acknowledgesa soc i al str"ucture as another descr i bes i t ~ the listener mustaccept being able to feel as those in the structure implicitlydo. Until. I for instance am willing to accept that people canreduce my own violence by hurting me, I am unwilling to infer- 13 -police hegemony to be a deterrent to violence. Unless people getin touch with their own capacity to feel superior or inferior tono one they relate to, they are incapable of imagining let aloneimplementing eg ad i tar i an orders. When an anthropologistdescribes a cultural pattern, the anthropologist is implicitlysaying, "Here is how I feel capable of living." Utopian visionsare likewise born of one's experience of oneself.social structures amounts to self-discovery.InferringWhether past lives and karma exist as some postulate, the logicof our knowledge of humanity is consistent with the idea that welearn not by imposing knowledge on empty brain capacity, but byusing data to arouse awareness of patterns that are alreadyimprinted in our being.Any plannedpersonalities.structural change has to be implemented byJust as one cannot depict egalitarian structuresbeyond one's discovery of egalitarianism in oneself, soegalitarian structures cannot be created except as individualsmanage to live a personal egalitaria~ existence. Radicalfeminists draw this inference from the unity of private andpublic existence, and hence emphasize remaining self-consciousabout avoiding hierarchy and extending compassion in movementsand organizations they build.Trying to implement justice or democracy is a profoundlyhumbling experience. In the feminist justice seminar I found- 14 -that as soon as the six weeks had passed beyond which thesyllabus contained no readings or suggested essays, the energy ofparticipants dissipated. If a student provided a reading, mostother students ignored it. If a student started a discussion andinvited response, there was silence unless I, the teacher,intervened and raised issues of my own. Occasionally someonewould say that she or he had wanted to write about something, butwas not sure whether I would give permission. L1Jhile I hadimplicitly assigned material for writing and discussion, essayspoured in and discussion would go for two hours without my evengetting in a comment or observation, let alone being able tointerrupt to call a break. After the ensuing lull, I foundmyself arousing the seminar by setting structure in other ways.And while the activity and interest in the seminar was in myteaching experience remarkably high, a number of students becameaimless and even paralyzed. I felt continual ambivalence (andstill do) about whether to be more or less authoritarian.ambivalence was shared. In a cloSing letter to meparticipant put it this way:You commented on the wealth of paper writing at thebeginning of the semester and the lack of any at theend. In rereadi ng your syll abLls, I find there was thestrong sLlggestion that for a grade of "e" several500-word essays would be required. There was no realneed for any written work towards the end of thesemester. Individuals covered what they wished to andunless someone felt very strongly about the topic andwished to discover more details and wished to sharethose, there was no need to write.- 15 -ThatoneI would encourage you and the department to continueyour e:-:periment. IU has too fe~o,j "different" classstructures and contents. I would encourage you to makemore of an effort to have total discussion class. Ifpossible it might be better to get it off apersonal-support group level and into a more academiclevel. Although, I assume you would counter that thereare enough academic courses already available on thiscampus and to make your course that way would be tocontinue the "masculine domination" which you areattempting to avoid •••.One of the things that bothered me most especially inthe beginning, was the lack of discussion in theclass. Very few people spoke in relation to the numberpresent at any given time. Additionally, very early, Iinterpreted some of your comments to indicate youexpected I would have some earth shattering comments tomake, and I literally shook for the first few weeks of.class. I felt stressed, scared, unsure of myself andof you and 'y'our "e)-:periment" at the same time I wasexhilarated and excited to be involved in such an"e:-:periment. II I was shocked and appall ed at some of thestatements which were made by the more conservativecontingents. I could not understand why they were insuch a class if that is how they felt. I still haveproblems with that.Here is an effort at democratization of limited scope andsize. In the feelings and efforts of participants including meare all manner of resistance to democracy, even to the urge totake non-conformists out of the community. It is often said thatchange like that I attempted in the seminar is hard or impossiblebecause the larger social structure is so screwed up. But ifminiscule democratization like that attempted in the seminar orin one's own home life is so elusive, how on earth canauthoritarian urges and habits be controlled in grandrevolutions?I suggest that for all the glibness we can muster when we- 16 -construct grand structural analyses and build broad theories~ thedifficulties of impl~menting change on even the smallest scalereveal how little we actually know. As one of those grandtheorists myself~ the seminar has taught me about my ownconsiderable ignorance.Personal experience and anecdotes do not interrupt ourunderstanding of social structure. Rather~ they are a crucialtest of our understanding~ and ought to become a regular part ofour theoretical discourse.ON CRIME AND PUNISHMENTBrock-Utne~ Harris and Kellough oppose punishment as a form ofviolence. This opposition stems both from women's specialawareness of how punishment is unjustly applied~ and from theirexperience as peacemakers.Punishment like all forms of violence moves toward those leastable to resist or to offend. In the public realm of punishment~underclass young men are most often punished for crime the worldover. Class standing interacts with age--Iate adolescence whenone is stripped of parental protection but not yet established inadulthood--to minimize ability to resist punishment.Meanwhile~ white-collar and organizational crime research hasmade it clear that the amount and seriousness of crime increases- 17 -with wealth and status. Middle-aged powerholders are odds-on tobe our worst offenders both because they have most opportunity tosteal~ hurt and kill~ and because they are most immune todetection let alone to being called to account. Just now oneillustration has attained prominence in the American media.People in the White House sent missiles to Iran in violation ofthe Arms Export Control Act~ and arranged weapons sales to theNicaraguan Contras in violation of the Boland Amendment~ whichwithout Congressional declarations of war also amounted tomassive misappropriation of government funds. These actscertainly resulted in many deaths. Under District of Columbialaw, whoever causes death by committing a felony is guilty offirst-degree murder. The difference between the~e murderers anda mass murderer like John Wayne Gacy is that the White Houseofficials killed more people more cold-bloodedly.The greater criminality of powerholders ought to be apparent tostudents of crime~ for criminology is wedded to the idea thatopportunity and capacity to escape sanction--together with closeassociation with other major offenders--are criminality's majordeterminants. However, practically everyone is also inclined tooverlook or rationalize abuses of power. We tend to vent ouranger at the violence and crime we suffer in safer directions.As electricity flows~ so we pass on violent tension we receive inpaths of least resistance. It is convenient for politicians andall too acceptable among the public at large to blame underclass- 18 -young men for the disorder generated from above. Another path oflow political resistance is underclass young men in foreignarmies~ and in an increasingly violent society like the UnitedBtates~ foreign warfare and wars on "the criminal element" e).;pandin alternating waves. Powerholding is in turn concentrated andexpanded by government support of military and criminal justiceproduction. Lawful and unlawful violence and predation grow inall social strata as the irresponsibility of powerholders iscatered to by battering oppressed people.Domestic violence against women and girls is the privatecounterpart to public violence against underclass young men.Domestic violence appears to be more prevalent among men who lackthe power to hire others to do their assault and predation. Menwho are least able to pass on violence publicly are perhaps mostdisposed to pass it on privately~ although of course we c,anexpect private violence by persons of status and wealth to bemore hidden from public view~ and hence our picture of domesticviolence may be heavily skewed. In any event it seems clear thatwomen and girls suffer heavily not for what they do to men~ butbecause they are convenient targets for the violence men receivefrom elsewhere and pass along.Public violence is largely reserved for men~ while the lives ofwomen are relegated to private management by men.toward keeping women's affairs under private~The biaspubliclyunsupervised male management helps explain why the label of- 19 -"criminal" 'or the status of "soldier" is seldom given to women~even though women suffer the greatest hidden violence in war (asby being raped) as they do at home. For criminal courts to takegreater cognizance of women's actions is an implicit usurpationof men's private domain; hence going after underclass young menin public is a path of less resistance than going after theIrJomen.As victims of private injustice it is easy for women tounderstand and recognize the parallel injustice of criminalsancti cms. With one logic radical feminists attack violenceagainst women and punishment of offenders.While the general American ethos, extending to my ownuniversity classrooms, is of approval for beating down assailantsand getting tougher still on the kinds of offenders policearrest, the ethos in the feminist justice seminar rapidly came tobe such that an aggressive, arrest-prone police officer becamethe deviant. As the semester moved along he came to open hisstatements with apologies for his own supposed ignorance orcharacter defects. Mind you, he was drawn into class discussionlike a moth to a flame. He closed the semester by writing:.. . I've learned some important thingsother people, and how we are socialized.tell you that I think this is right upbest classes I have taken at I.U. Idiscussion format.- 20 -about myself,I'd like tothere with thelike the openBut he was the only student in the seminar to propose that hebe given a grade of B rather than A. He became the mostself-critical member of the group.This contrasts with other classes I have taught where womenhave been among the unabashed and unflinching advocates ofgetting tough on young criminals~ and where leniency has tendedto be a minority position.We had some strong personal accounts of women's victimizationin our early discussion. It appeared to me that women moved toshow solidarity with the plight of their sisters~moved--perhaps paternalistically--to sympathize.while men wereThe injusticeof passing violence downward was widely acknowledged because itfelt so close to home. Once that injustice was felt~ the logicof the position tended to carryover to matters of criminaljUstice. Questioning why' people would abuse women carried overto why someone would use violence to effect an arrest, or indeedwhy someone would bother to make an arrest at all~ let alone whypeople should be sent to prison.In the course of these same discussions women in particularbecame confident of describing how conflicts might be peacefullyresolved. As part of recognizing women's strength~ peacemakingbecame a celebrated skill.their skill by describingto stay cool and talkNow it was left to men to boast ofoccasions on which they had been ableinstead of fighting. This happened- 21 -repeatedly both in essays and in class discussion.Peacemaking is an alternative not only to punishment~ but toforms of violence and predation we know as crime. As punishmentfeeds crime~ so peacemaking is the means not only to refrain fromcrime~ but to resist crime in a way that relieves rather thanpassing on and building violent tension.As peacemaking and penal abolition go hand-in-hand withfeminism for Brock-Utne~ Harris and Kellough~ so feminism becamethe key to unlocking the peacemaking sides of men and women alikein the seminar. Feminism made alternatives to crime andpunishment real, practical and respectable.CONCLUSIONCoherent rejection of violence, crime and punishment~ andpracticing peacemaking in their place. have largely beendismissed as something women do privately. Radical feministliterature is a vehicle for celebrating these virtues,legitimizing their assertion in public discourse.and forA seminarfounded on discussion of this literature enabled women to makethis side of themselves public,side of their own experience.and for men to acknowledge thisBirgit Brock-Utne observes that growing up is harder for boysthan girls inasmuch as girls are allowed to be tomboys and public22achievers~sissies.while boys suffer unrelenting condemnation for beingAs important as it was for women in the seminar tocelebrate their connectedness and compassion and to have theirvictimization acknowledged, I think it perhaps even moreimportant for humanity that men were able to express andcelebrate the "feminine" sides of themselves.crime and punishment begs to be feminized.The male domain ofIn a structural sense the seminar allowed peacemaking to betied to democratization~ not only in literature but as anobjective of classroom life. Democracy--influencing action inproportion to how directly one is affected by the consequencesrather than owning the right to make decisions for others--is thecollective form of personal commitment to peacemaking. Pad i calfeminist literature inspired seminar members to try peacemaking;our ability was tested by our capacity to share power in ourgroup. Our experience together was a ground upon which we builtand revised our theories of social structure and crime control.Sexism is one of our earliest and most basic experiences ofviolence including patterns of crime and punishment. Thisexperience may be preceded for many of us by agism--an awarenessof how prejudice against the old and the young feeds violence andoppression. But as yet, only sexism has spawned a richliterature and broadly organized political resistance. Padicalfeminism adds a concrete, personal vision of how to make peace.The feminist justice seminar indicates that getting back to such23basic experience of violence and oppression is a powerful way tomove beyond crime and punishment, into democracy. Feministjustice contributes so much to our theorizing because it enablesus to feel issues of crime, punishment and social structure sodeeply in ourselves.- 24 -SEMINAR ON FEMINIST JUSTICECriminal Justice P493 (sec. 1720)/P680 (sec. 1731)Spring Semester 1986Meets ~, ". Ball an tine Hall5:45-7:45,018SYLLABUSConvened by Hal PepinskySycamore 319335-1450; 335-9325 (messages)Office hrs. M, 3:30-4:30, W, 1:15-2:15I don't presume to know a lot about feminist literature, and understandingjustice is a constant struggle. It would be foolish to spell out what will becovered in this seminar throughout the semester. Rather, here is what I hopeto layout in this syllabus:1. Why I am offering the seminar •.2. Some substance to get us underway the first few weeks.3. A set of ground rules by which I will be bound, and some requests ofpartiCipants.WHY THE SEMINAR IS BEIlIG COllVERED . :When, 'last May, we were asked to propose'what we would teach this spring, Iwas awash in a sea of newd.deas and -experiences', in the latter part of a studyof "peaceful. societies" in Oslo, Norway.·' I was away from where I could surveylocal library resources. ·1 had afee:ling I would want to do something new,but I was at a loss to figure out what wonln be practical and meaningful.My wife, Jill Bystydzienski, came to ,the rescue •. , Women's studies is her. specialty. She knew I had.'been interested in her' york, and knew roughly whatliterature would be available. She suggested I offer'a:course on feministjustice, and promised to help introduce me to the literature •. As luck would have it, I had.recently received a paper by Kay Harris, whoteaches 'criminal justice at Temple University, "Toward·a Feminist Vision ofJustice." I found the paper exciting; I still do. . I would like to start theseminar by discussing the paper with participants.I had also noticed that feminists featured prominently in peace studies and inlaw in Oslo. The author of a ground breaking book which I would also like usto discuss, Birgit Brock-Utne (Educating for Peace: !Feminist Perspective),was facilitating Jill's research. (Birgit Brock-Utne is 'slated to spend timehere at TUB this April; you'll have a chance to meet her.) The office I hadborrowed ha.ppened to be in the University of Oslo's pioneering Women's Law'Department, which I would like for us to discuss as well.All in all, I knew just enough to know that I could learn a great deal fromlooking at crime and punishment as all these feminist sources proposed, and soI accepted Jill's suggestion with enthusiasm.Available at,bookstores:',; ~,Birgit Brock-Utne, Educating for Peace: A Feminist Perspective. New York:Pergamon (1985).Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women'sDevelopment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1981).Available at Collegiate Copies:M. Kay Harris, "Toward a Feminist Vision of Justice" (unpublished paperpresented at the International Conference on Prison Abolition, 1985).Sara Ruddick, "Maternal Thinking." Feminist Studies 6 (Summer 1980): 342-67.Department of Women's Law, University of Oslo, "Working Papers in Women's LawNo.2" (February 1983).I'm proposing that we discuss some of these readings on each of severaltopics, from the second through the sLxth class meetings. Each selection ofreadings is headed by a question.I suggest. we begi~ each discussion by trying to describe how the question isanswered in the readings.I propose we then turn to applying each of these feminist "answers" tocriticizing traditional notions about crime and punishment. Kay Harrisprovides some examples (for example Packer's distinction between "crimecontrol" and "due process" models of punishment). Many participants doubtless,bave a background in.criminal justice, :andcanreadilyprovide examples oftheir own. For others,!. suggest :pe.rusing the libraryshel ves' in the regionof HV6001 (t~e number for criminology te~ts), and picking out a book of.standard ideas abol,1t cr-ime and .punishment'you can take out and use during thesemester.I :expect we will be disqussing material from Harris's paper during each ofthese five class sessions. I would therefore ask seminar participants to readthrough her paper before each of these class meetings. I would also askparticipants to read the other suggested readings, and then to think through(1) how you would answer the question posed 'for the clas's session, and (2) howyou would use this answer to criticize some standard ("masculine") idea aboutcrime and punishment.One way to structure your reading and thinking is to write a short essay, sayabout 500 words, reviewing your points" for class discussion •. I'll begin byasking someone to start in, perhaps by paraphrasing what she or he haswritten. I will also be happy to read a~y paper you give me and give quickand specific written feedback •. I .ould ask each participant to tr,y writingsuch essays for at least thrae of these five class sessions. .3rationale for the grade they believe they deserve. I expect to give you thegrade you propose and honestly defend.Except for personal written communications you ask me to keep off the record(and which I may find too personal to respond to), I'll reserve the right tomake copies and show any of your written work, including your proposal andself-evaluation, to any of my colleagues. This way I can hold myselfaccountable ,to them for the grading, and open this experiment of mine tocritical examination with them.What I hope from this experiment in grading and course requirements is to showthat students can take charge of their own learning and conduct themselvesresponsibly without being dict9ted to by the teacher.I ask students not to abuse this freedom, to take charge of their owneducation. If the experiment succeeds, I'll feel comfortable giving studentsin other classes a similar opportunity. Please don't spoil it for them.5

About Me

I retired Jan. 2009 from after 33 years on the criminal justice faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington. I continue not to charge for any form of public service, including speaking and consulting, and now have plenty of free time to do so on request. I do not do social networking. I regularly monitor just one email account: pepinsky@indiana.edu; my home phone number is 1-614-885-6341; my skype name is halpep. My papers and such are archived at http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/findingaids/view?brand=general&docId=InU-Ar-VAA9639.xml&doc.view=entire_text.
I am known as a co-founder of "peacemaking criminology." Page proofs of my latest, 2006 U of Ottawa Press book, Peacemaking: Reflections of a Radical Criminologist, are freely available at http://critcrim.org/sites/default/files/Pepinsky_proofs_0.pdf , the end of which lists my publications, nine books and over 80 articles and chapters in all, on a wide range of subjects from the international to the interpersonal level. My preceding book, A Criminologist's Quest for Peace, is also freely available at http://critcrim.org/pepinsky, and a pdf of Myths That Cause Crime is on the critcrim.org home page.